Dr. Hugh Notman explores our fascination with primates like baboons, studying their complex communication and cognition in the wild
Dr. Hugh Notman understands the curiosity and affinity humans feel for primates, as a researcher who has spent his career studying them.
“You look at them and you say, ‘there's something familiar about what they're doing that's different from what those lions are doing or what those penguins are doing,’” said Notman, a primatologist and associate professor of anthropology in Athabasca University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Our fascination with primates stems in part from the desire to find out more about ourselves, he said.
“I think that underlies why primatologists do what they do. But there’s also just an inherent curiosity. And there’s a pursuit of knowledge aspect to everything that we do.”
Studying baboon interaction
Notman’s research has focused on how primates communicate and interact with each other in the wild. His most recent project looks at baboons in South Africa, who live in large, complex, matrilineal social groups.
He and his colleagues are looking at how the baboons keep track of each other, how they interact, and how they’re behaving.
“The phrase I would use is social vigilance ... we’re interested in how they’re sort of using these moment-to-moment observations of their social group around them to make their own individual decisions about what to do next.”
You look at them and you say, ‘there's something familiar about what they're doing that's different from what those lions are doing or what those penguins are doing.'
Dr. Hugh Notman
Risk of anthropomorphizing
Because humans feel such affinity with primates, there is a real risk of anthropomorphizing the baboons, Notman added.
“We can’t assume that just because primates do something, that it’s the sort of evolutionary roots of our own behaviour, or that because they do it, then it’s natural for us to do it as well.”
Still, there is much to be learned from primates for our understanding of ourselves, but also for the understanding and conservation of primates, he said.
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